faderift | open | well i've lost it all

Entry tags:

open | well i've lost it all

WHO: Lexie and the brave people who feel like maybe getting things thrown at them/being yelled at/cried on/some other flavor of ridiculousness.
WHAT: Breakup Drama ♫
WHEN: nowish (end of Haring)
WHERE: De La Fontaine apartments in Hightown
NOTES: if you're a melodramatic noblewoman with a sudden case of regency constitution clap your hands
[ if you want a certain flavor of ridiculousness, put it in your title or hmu on plurk (@shaestorms) or discord (shae#7274) ♥ ]

It has been three days since she returned to the apartments the Comte keeps for her and her sister in the middle of the night, and Alexandrie de la Fontaine has not emerged from her room. In fact, Alexandrie de la Fontaine has not emerged from her bed. The only mark of her continued residence is the persistent heartbroken sobbing from behind the door. It is largely quiet, muffled, a background sound to be filtered out like the ocean waves. It does on occasion become more energetic as some thought—new or revisited for the hundredth time—sets her off, or disappear entirely when the expenditure of it all sends her to sleep.

Meal after meal is brought, left, and found again untouched; the tea over-steeped, the coffee stale, and both quickly rendered cold, for she will not stand for a fire being lit in the hearth. (The first maid to find it silly and begin to kindle one in any case for her lady's own good received a thin bruise the shape of the side of an expertly aimed hairbrush and a tongue-lashing for her trouble. There have since been no other attempts.) Instead, she has wrapped herself in the covers of her bed, her attire unchanged since her return save to become rumpled, her hair slowly coming free over time as the pins vex her and are yanked out and thrown to disappear in the rug.

She is missing entirely. Silent on the network when she would usually be flip, absent from both duties and regularly kept company. Crystal messages go unanswered, and callers are turned away with the vague explanation that Lady Alexandrie has taken ill and is not receiving visitors; that they may leave a card, or a message, and she shall respond once recovered.

Some callers are, of course, slightly more insistent.

[ Here you still are! If you're not Evie and you're coming in the normal person way, Marceau is chasing after you right now in that sort of eminently austere way fourth generation lifelong butlers have. If you're a scalawag or something, she has a window. There's probably a trellis. We'll figure something out. Prose or brackets are fine! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Kitty is flushed, the redness having come into her face when that door opened. In spite of her bluster, there's still a primal sort of terror involved in being arrested - memories of Tim, nabbed by the Night Police and never seen again - memories of her own close brush with the Tower. She hadn't expected the fear, because she hadn't felt it when the guards were abstract - it had come on so suddenly.

When it's Gwen instead of them - She feels a little weak and a little hot and a lot grateful. Her eyes close a moment, and she swallows, and she pushes it all down and away. No time for it now. No place for it.

A breath out. Then, squaring her shoulders, trying to look collected: ]

Hullo, Gwenaelle. What d'you mean, that man?

[ Is it a relief, that the situation with the guard has been taken care of without her having to had back down? She doesn't know. She also doesn't know if she's 'about done with this', or what indeed it might take to get her out of bed, only that with so many attempting to get her out of it, the lingering defeat of staying within its confines has now twisted to look like victory, and so she will hang on to her position with her claws, her mouth set in a thin mulish line.

It is childish, perhaps (not perhaps, it is), but now that it is a contest of wills, now that there is a concrete goal she has hope of attaining, Alexandrie is determined to abide exactly. Where. She. Is.

She speaks past Kitty, her eyes narrowing to unwelcoming slits. ]

I am trying to.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were abdicating responsibility for any sort of self besides whatever's convenient to Loki in the throes of whatever suffering he's decided to spread around with a shovel.

( do you know, she doesn't sound sorry. she does seem to have answered both of them at the same time, though. it isn't that she doesn't think it's likely something is, honestly, happening with him—

just that there's nothing that could justify his behaviour. whatever it is, it isn't alexandrie's fault, and if he can't grow up, she ought to. )

You can't imagine how disappointing it is to know that you'll just stay down when he kicks you there. When I said decide who you are, I wasn't aware we were considering 'exactly what he's treated you as' a serious option.

( they're probably best friends. )

I can't make you stop being pathetic. But you're not going to wallow in delusion while you do it. My seamstresses are going to be here in about two hours for the fittings and our needlework. You can have bathed or not. Kitty and I will be happy to help you make yourself presentable, ( did kitty know that she was going to be happy to do that, or ) or not. And you can talk to us, or not.

( but as she remains too busy to simply drop everything to be here—well, she can't. it's both a compromise and a dare. )

[ Kitty's jaw drops open - quite literally - as she looks between Gwen and Lexie. Sorry, she can't - ]

This is about a - a break-up? [ And then, to Lexie, even angrier - ] I thought this was about something that mattered!

[ Kitty Jones: Always ready to offer sympathy. ]

[ She’s not talking to you anymore, Kitty. You’ve been arrested. And you’re a teenager and don’t know anything about anything, especially this.

There would be some small petty victory in taking Gwen up on this offer of the younger woman’s service that would no doubt be enforced by Gwen’s formidable sharpness, but she finds she would rather Kitty would simply finally go away than give her something else to whine self-righteously about—

Be righteous, be indignant, but do so elsewhere.

—it’s sudden and unwelcome and as coldly snarled in memory as it had been in life, and there go the damned tears again, but the old wheels can’t help but turn at the idea of Gwen’s seamstresses arriving. They will gossip. She has been given the opportunity to decide what it is that ultimately will undoubtedly get back to him. Will she be a wreck of a woman, or perfectly unaffected, or admirably lovely and soldiering on despite her obvious heartbreak?

She can decide in the bath. After all, it would be simple enough to wreck herself again. ]

If we are to do needlepoint perhaps you ought to teach Kitty how to do something useful while I am out. Hot air has never laid down thread.

[ Kitty responds to that with a sneer. ]

I know how to do needlepoint. I probably sew better than you do.

[ And then she shakes her head. She can't contain herself. Even though she knows this is hurtful, and in spite of her fury she doesn't want to hurt Lexie - she can't help but say it. ]

Is this really just what you're always going to do? A man was beastly to you when you were a girl, and so you turned beastly in turn. And now a man is beastly to you again, and you do the exact same thing - you hit your servants and have your friends hauled away to jail and say awful, awful things. [ She flings one hand up in sheer frustration. ] Why are you imitating the worst people, the people who treat you the worst, when you're surrounded by people who are lovely?

Because if we all think she's too stupid to know any better, we'll leave her like the rest of them, and she won't have to be afraid of it any more.

( gwenaëlle pats alexandrie's hand, not unkindly. )

If she drives us away, she was in control of it. And she can tell herself that that's better.

( without changing her tone, )

I left instructions for a bath to be prepared.

[ she quickly narrows her eyes at Gwen for having the absolute audacity to be correct, withdrawing her hand with prim alacrity and rolling her eyes with a scoff at Kitty as she makes her damp and bedraggled way out of the room. ]

Why, how right you are! Next time you are low and in need of consolation or encouragement I shall think, 'what would my good and lovely friend Kitty do?' and burst into your room, take you to task for whatever you did in your extremity, ruin your bedding, freeze you, snort at your reasoning when I do learn it—although I shall not learn it through inquiry, I shall let someone else enlighten me—and then, when you naturally react ungratefully, I shall behave as if I have done absolutely nothing I should feel ashamed of in the slightest while looking down my nose at you because I believe you to categorically deserve it.

Truly admirable. I am so glad to have made your acquaintance, mademoiselle. Please do write down your enlightened opinion on how one ought to properly deal with someone who does not discharge their duties properly after being thrice corrected to no avail. Dock their wages? Release them from service with a poor reference?

[ She continues, the litany growing quieter as she makes her way down the hall towards the bathing chamber. ]

Set them to some less kind task they are unused to, like cleaning sheets that have had water thrown all across them somehow that is like to get their hands chapped and raw?

Ah! But of course! Give them a foot massage and fawn over them, as those who are paid well to serve are morally superior by virtue of their simple existence!

[ A door slams ]

[ Kitty's fists get tighter and tighter through that rant, until she's nearly pale with rage. The anger comes from outrage compounded with guilt - the awful, uncomfortable sense that she has done something terribly wrong, that she's been a horrible unforgivable monster who's just made everything worse because she doesn't ever know what to do or how to do it, who can't actually make someone like Lexie change her mind - that all these cycles are just going to continue on, regardless, of the rich grinding down the people below them - because all she's ever succeeded at is making people hate her, like her mum and dad staring at her, look at this surly little vixen, this isn't my little girl - ]

I'm going to fucking drown her.

[ And then Kitty bursts into tears. It's so sudden that even she hadn't known it was coming. Her breath hitches in a sob; she turns away from Gwen, quick as she can, to try to hide those tears. ]

I'll - I'll clean up a bit. Go on - do - do other stuff.

( gwenaëlle doesn't, immediately, look away from where she'd been watching alexandrie's retreat with a frown—but she reaches out an arm and wraps it around kitty's shoulders, or at least the general vicinity of them (why is she so tall?) (unnecessary) and says, )

She's a fucking mess, she'll be in there a while. Have my handkerchief.

( it's delicate and monogrammed, but what can you do. )

She's angry because I'm right and it's easier to be angry than anything else. I think it's the actual language of Orlais, if I'm being perfectly honest. It's the only one we get taught. She thought she had something different and being wrong is...

I wasn't angry with him, when Alexander left me. I was angry with myself for thinking that he wouldn't. And that kind of thing curdles in you, and it's—cruel. And difficult. And hard to see through, when you're still in the first flush of it. I know it doesn't really help, but she wouldn't try as hard if it didn't matter.

( hesitating, then— )

If you need to go, I'm going to stay. The mouthy bitch won't be alone, you don't have to feel badly if you can't be here.

( it might be better for alexandrie if she stayed, but gwenaëlle isn't sure it's better for kitty, and balancing the two is a juggling act she feels utterly unprepared for—either choice, she thinks, can be borne. she doesn't want to try and make it for her. )

She wants me to go.

[ If Lexie were still in the room, that'd be a statement of defiance. Fuck you, I'm not going. With the object of her spite elsewhere, the stubbornness is harder to maintain. She feels as though she ought to go. Ought to go and never come back, because it turns out that when she'd thought that Lexie was gentling and softening and expanding her way of thinking it was all just wishful thinking on Kitty's part. Just dreaming that she could take someone's good heart and use it to shift their way of thinking. Making believe that it was possible to overcome a lifetime of privilege if someone just learned how. If you were a friend to them.

She hiccups, dashing her shirtsleeve against her eyes, trying to stanch the tears. ]

It'd make her happier if she didn't see me again.

No, ( softer—strange, the softest gwenaëlle has probably ever sounded to kitty's ears, when she turns where she sits and presses a thumb to kitty's cheekbone. ) No, it wouldn't. It'd just make her feel right, and she'd tell herself that it was good, and then she'd miss you, and she'd be miserable. I speak from personal experience when I say it actually isn't better to make people leave you first, it's just as shit as the other way.

Worse, if they weren't going to. Sooner or later you realise.

( her hand drops down to kitty's, presses. )

She's behaving badly because she's in pain. It isn't an excuse, but I happen to think there's a glimmer of a person in there who'll know she owes you an apology afterwards.

( not gwenaëlle, though, who had the temerity to be right at her very loudly. )

[ A sniff. It's true; the softness of Gwen's voice and touch is enough to startle KItty out of a bit of her self-pity and self-hatred. She wipes her face, finding the tears slowing a bit, finding her breath becoming steadier and slower. It's very strange - comfort's never really worked on her before. But then again, comfort's not really been offered to her by anyone for a very long time. Even coming out of the hospital after Mr Tallow's assault, Mum and Dad had really just scolded her...Lakshmi had been a bit soft and sweet to her, but she hadn't really known what to do with that. Hadn't felt like she deserved it at the time. She guesses - the sweetest person up to this point had really been...Gwen's dad. Which is - its own little tangle of complicated feelings. ]

I don't want an apology for me. [ Another deeper breath. ] I want one for that maid. The one she hit. That was why - [ Kitty falters, biting her lip. ] I lost my temper. I ought to have been sweet to her, but - I was just so furious - She oughtn't be the sort of person who'd hurt those who can't fight back. Even when she's sad. I don't want to be friends with her if she is.

( gwenaëlle hums, not quite coming down on one side or the other of her thought—and then, )

She listens to you, doesn't she? You can't always tell, through all of her flutter and hair, but she does listen, she's learned things. She isn't the same as she was when we met, that's for damned sure.

( this is, indeed, going somewhere. )

[ A little bitterly: ]

Yeah, she's learned what to say to really hurt my feelings.

Among other things, ( because quite frankly that is fair.

after a moment, )

And she's in pain so she's reverting to what she knows better. No one becomes perfect or sheds every lesson in a moment, they'll make stupid mistakes. You can write her off, now, or you can still be here when she's able to hear things without interpreting them through that and say that. All she's going to hear right now is 'blah blah you don't matter as much as other people', it doesn't matter what you're actually saying. But it's a moment, and it ends.

You're not obligated. If you don't care any more, you don't care, I get it. But if you do, and you're just mad now too—

Maker knows I've done some fucked up things, too. And I've had friendships survive things maybe they shouldn't have done, but it's...it isn't nothing, to come out the other side.

[ Kitty looks down at her hands for a few long moments, picking grime out from under one of her fingernails. Is it worth it? Even aside from the self-martyring thought of oh, I've screwed it up, Lexie doesn't want me anymore - does Kitty? She's hurled people aside from less. She's hurled people aside who mattered more to her for less. She'd had a good friend when she was little, Lydia, who'd told her that her short hair was ugly and made her look like a boy and Kitty hadn't ever spoken to her again after that day. Still feels a little bit angry when she thinks of Lydia. And Jakob, when Jakob had stopped leaving his room, Kitty had stopped seeing him. So who's Lexie to her? Why's Lexie worth the abuse? Why's she worth tolerating being treated like a guttersnipe, like some trollop, like an inferior?

Finally, quietly: ]

I'll stay. And I'll give her another chance. But if she keeps treating me like I'm rubbish, I'm not going to put up with it. No matter what we've shared. I'm not rubbish.

Tell her so. Like that, not just slapping back at her when she lashes out. 'I'm here because I care about you and you're going to have to live with how you respond to that'.

( gwenaëlle, famously intemperate, but she sounds uncomfortably experienced in this particular arena. maybe don't examine that closely. )

You aren't. You don't deserve it from her any more than she deserves it from Loki. And she isn't any more off the hook for it than he is, I just think she might actually give a damn about that.

( where she has her doubts, as much as she's always liked him—

he, she thinks, would cut off his entire face to spite his own face. )

We don't fight with her. She wants that. What she needs is people to be honest with her, and as patient as we can manage under the circumstances.

Edited 2018-12-27 23:55 (UTC)

[ A grunt. Kitty's settling down, now, moving out of her self-pity and back into her normal sharp-tongued state of existence. ]

But apparently 'your boyfriend was a self-obsessed wanker who wasn't good enough for you in the first place and isn't worth giving a single shit about and you're better without him' isn't the right kind of honesty? Since that didn't go over so well.

Edited 2018-12-27 23:59 (UTC)

But now it's been said,

( ever so neatly, )

and we can all take it as read.

Could be said again. Repeatedly. At volume.

[ A sigh. ]

Anyway. I'll follow your lead.

( gwenaëlle nudges her with her shoulder, quietly affectionate. ) That'll be novel.

( after a beat: ) You wouldn't, probably, if you'd met me three years ago. And Alexandrie's only been here a matter of months. I'm not saying we never get held accountable, just that there's...productive ways of doing it. She doesn't have the capacity to listen in this moment, it doesn't mean she never does.

I was fucking awful to Coupe, which is just as she deserves because she's a dreadful bitch, but—I pushed her so, so hard, because I was terrified. All she was trying to do was make me better and stronger, and I took aim at every single thing I could think of to hurt her so she'd think I wasn't worth it. I hate her, she's appalling, ( so extraordinarily casually it cannot possibly be true, gwenaëlle has never hated anyone that blithely, she's a mercurial monster who does things at maximum passion only, ) but I can rely on her.

Sometimes that's what people need. Someone to think they're worthwhile when they don't. And it's harder when she's already pinned that on someone who's let her down. Not impossible, just. Infuriatingly difficult.

[ A little nod. Not that Kitty's good at not letting people down. Quite the opposite, really. But - Lexie's not her mum, or any of her teachers, or anyone but Lexie. The circumstances here are the circumstances here. If she keeps letting her past get her all twisted up, nothing good's going to come of it. ]

Are you and Coupe all right now?

When she fucking turns up, I'll let you know.

( but that is an entirely separate thing, and things with coupe have always been...

complicated. to say the least. she brushes it aside, )

Just don't expect too much of Alexandrie today. We're riding the storm because we love her, even though she's also a miserable bitch. Because she would if it were you or me.

( a pause. )

And I would, if it were you.

[ Alexandrie, for her part, is crying again in the bath as she struggles on her own with the mess she had made of her waist-length curls. Because she'd dismissed the maid as soon as she had been able. Because she knows she's angry, and she knows she's cruel, because she'd trained herself to be both angry and cruel because kindness is weakness and apology is weakness, and the only way she knows how to spare anyone that is to tell them to go away.

But nobody will.

Marie wouldn't go away, and wouldn't go away, and wouldn't go away, and so she'd been angry and cruel and hurt her. Kitty wouldn't go away, and wouldn't go away, and wouldn't go away, and so she'd been angry and cruel and tried to hurt her too. Now Gwen is here, and she won't leave either.

No-one will do what she asks, which means no-one cares what she wants, which means no-one cares about her. Which means the only reason they're here is to take advantage of the power they can take. The gossip. The knives they can sharpen and tuck away, knowing now what places in her heart she curls around when pushed.

That cannot be right. That cannot make sense. This is not court. This is not Orlais. You are in Kirkwall. Things are not like that here.

But they are, they are, they are, they are like that everywhere, and even the heat of the bath feels cold as she gives up on her hair, wraps her arms around her knees, buries her face in them and wonders, childlike, if anyone had ever been sorry they'd hurt her. Or if, perhaps, she had learned well enough from Emile that they had simply never known they had.

What kind of victory, that? Pyrrhic. And lonely. Horribly, horribly lonely.

Would it feel better or worse to lose?

It occurs to her that she is, here, finally alone.

And she hates this too. ]

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